• 🏆 Texturing Contest #33 is OPEN! Contestants must re-texture a SD unit model found in-game (Warcraft 3 Classic), recreating the unit into a peaceful NPC version. 🔗Click here to enter!
  • It's time for the first HD Modeling Contest of 2024. Join the theme discussion for Hive's HD Modeling Contest #6! Click here to post your idea!

Creating a Building

Level 5
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
100
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Creating your Building.
Creating your Building Abilities.
Setting your Actor & Making your Building Constructable

PLEASE, read this entire Tutorial before following the Steps. It is very important that you know what you are getting into before continuing this process. I will not lie, it takes time and patience.

Creating your Building

This tutorial assumes you have completed this http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/general-mapping-tutorials-659/depth-unit-creation-168893/ tutorial.

I'm using a Barracks for this example. As explained in the unit creation tutorial. Do not copy from the Barracks (Flying) unit, you have to create yours by selecting "Set to Parent Value" similar to how this looks:

DontDoThis.jpg


I've created my buildings and named them Squad Infantry and Squad Infantry (Flying). Before we go onto the Actors, lets move to Abilities.

Creating your Buildings Abilities

Open up the Abilities and Buttons tabs of the data editor. We will be creating three abilities: Lift-Off, Land, and Train. First add three buttons, like so, dont forget to set hotkeys:

BuildingTutorialStep5.jpg


Once that is done return to the Abilities tab. Create the following three Abilities:

BuildingTutorialStep6.jpg


Select your newly created Land Ability and change the following values:

BuildingTutorialStep7.jpg


BuildingTutorialStep8.jpg


Do the same thing for your Lift-Off, making sure the Unit Morph is the (Flying) Variation.

Lets now setup your Train Ability.

BuildingTutorialStep9.jpg


For now, all I've done is modify the values already in place, Marine, Reaper, Marauder, Ghost with my replacement heroes. Since we are only setting up ReD in this example you can ignore the rest for now. Open up whichever one you wish to change to train your hero. Now change these Values:

Button: Selects the Button that will be displayed on the command card.
State: Not sure, but restricted seems to be the way to go. Any input would be appreciated on that heh
Resource: Cost of the Unit
Time: Amount of Production time
Unit: Selects the unit that will be produced. (can set multiple values) i.e. Zergling

Heres how mine looks:

BuildingTutorialStep10.jpg

BuildingTutorialStep11.jpg


Great now go to your Unit and replace the abilities from the Barracks with your newly created Abilities. Don't forget to set your command card as well! Before you can test out these abilities we need to setup the Actor.

AH! I forgot to have us create a Build Ability. I've already got a hero worker created, so I'll start right at creating the ability for him. We need to create three values. One in Abilities, secondly Buttons, and third under Requirements. NOTE: The requirement is not necessary until you have another building that you want to be built beforehand. In this case I have one, so I'm showing how to set your own. They should appear like this:

BuildingTutorialStep13.jpg


Setup your Requirement to look like this:

BuildingTutorialStep14.jpg


Now setup your ability. This is actually the exact same as the Unit train ability. edit the same fields as you did before.

BuildingTutorialStep15.jpg


Button: Selects the Button that will be displayed on the command card.
State: Suppressed seems to be the way to go this time.
Requirements: You should leave Default for now. I chose "Have squad HQ". As it sounds, requirements to construct your building. You can also choose no requirements.
Resource: Cost of the Unit
Unit: Selects the unit that will be produced.
Time: Amount of Production time

Now set the Build ability to your worker, and dont forget to add commands to the command card. Once done, lets start the final steps to getting your buildings operational.

Setting your Actor & Making your Building Constructable

Originally, I would set my actors for the buildings exactly how I setup my units.

Everything seemed perfect, my buildings were placeable, and Lift-Off Land was working great. Except that it would transform to the original Barracks on Lift-Off, an easy fix once I created their own Lift-Off / Land abilities. So, what was the problem right? Construction! For some odd reason this was the result of setting the actor how I did:

BuildingTutorialStep3.jpg


No Construction Animation, & all building animations werent working (Lift, Land, Lower, Raise)!!! Tears heh

After hours and hours of testing things out with the Events + values of the Actor I created for my building and abilities. The only thing that worked in the end was to manually Copy + Paste, then set, the Events + values in the Barracks and Terran Construction Actor. This was originally figured out using the Command Center which has a list twice as long as the one I'll show. Remember this is the Barracks and Terran Construction actor, and I've highlighted the field you need to change.

BuildingTutorialStep4.jpg


This is where it starts to get rough. Disregard the fact you cant copy and paste multiple Entries, when you paste in a value it will scroll you to the bottom of the screen. Do this 50+ times and you'll be close to done. Better hope you pay good attention, you dont want to have to go back and cross-reference the whole thing cause you missed a value or copied the wrong one. (oh, that was a fun one) haha. Anyways, after I duplicated it all and made it look like this:

BuildingTutorialStep2.jpg


This is all directly under the Default values of the Events +

The Terran Construction is much more forgiving and should look like this:

BuildingTutorialStep16.jpg


After all that, I could now see my building's construction and all ability animations were fixed. Sweet ass! But now the lift-off sounds arent working. It just never ends! Tears hair out. ;)

BuildingTutorialStep12.jpg


Here's how to set the Lift-Off Sounds, look for the actor called Terran Building Lift Off, its a SoundOneShot. Just like before, open the Events+ and copy the value applicable to the building you've created.

For landing, the sounds are individual. Look for:

Barracks Land
Factory - Land
Starport Land
Terran Building Land (ironically, just for the supply depot)

The Command Center seems to be working fine through all of this. It's Landing sound must be included with the original actor.

Give your building a try and train your hero now that you've gone through all that hard work :)

Even if this doesnt work out, I sure learned a lot about this program. Thanks for your time!
 
Last edited:
Top